


the devil is not as dark as he is painted

by amainiris



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 08:36:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19943272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amainiris/pseuds/amainiris
Summary: If the world calls you a monster then you have no reason to disappoint them, Megamind had always mused. He’d half-expected as a child that the sweetness in him simply fell away, and there was nothing left to fill the cavern.





	the devil is not as dark as he is painted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lemonshrimp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemonshrimp/gifts).



> This was a request and a lot of fun to write. I hope you enjoy!

  


If the world calls you a monster then you have no reason to disappoint them, Megamind had always mused. He’d half-expected as a child that the sweetness in him simply fell away, and there was nothing left to fill the cavern.

In retrospect, it’s not so surprising that he grew to crave the lash when the lash was all he ever knew.

Other children had doors, windows, skylights; Megamind had bars and shadows and eyes that chased the specters of ghosts. He was guided by criminals, by those the world had thrown away, yet couldn’t find it in his heart do the same.

And beneath it all, the bewildered and frightened tendency to imagine something dark and horrid at the heart of everything he’d ever loved, or ever would.

  
  
  
  
  


At the time of Metroman’s death, Megamind firmly believes that heroes can be created.

He simply isn’t aware that the same can be said of villains.

  
  
  
  


Should it shock anyone that evil needs purpose as much as good?

  
  
  
  
  


She fascinates him because he believes she is nothing like him.

Roxanne with the boy-short hair, the smile so sweet it makes his teeth ache, the easy sway of her hips when she walks, unselfconscious, beautiful, free. 

One sarcastic word from her and he floats for weeks, but he’s not sure he can help it.

He does know, however, that this is not how supervillains are supposed to behave.

  
  
  


He becomes content in his cell even when he knows he can escape it. He becomes content with the uncomfortable chair, with the steel walls, with the shuttered window and the little mirror that serves only to give him his own reflection and not a glimpse of the outer world.

He becomes content because this is where he belongs, and anyone, human or alien or animal, knows to accept the punishment they deserve.

He was born in a cage, grew up in a cage, serves his life sentences in a cage. He doesn’t think to question it.

You can’t change who, or what, you are.

  
  
  
  
  


Dealing with Titan is… difficult. Does the idiot not understand how heroes are supposed to behave? Does he not grasp that they are selfless, that they serve the greater good, that they put others before themselves, that they know that love is not just an emotion but an act?

Training him is like dealing with an unbroken puppy. Too boisterous and loud and lazy, all at once. Too self-consumed. He does all of the right things wrong.

Megamind does all of the wrong things right.

  
  
  


Sometimes he really truly does wish he could be Bernard, but he never wishes it so much as when Roxanne kisses him over dinner in the twilit-restaurant, the molten light falling through the windows, onto his human hands, into her human eyes.

Her kiss is sweet and light, a moth’s brush, and Megamind has never felt it before. He wonders if this is what it would be truly like, to live underneath this skin in this world. He wonders how many masks he would have to take off to see.

And then the perfection is shattered, Roxanne realizes who she is kissing, and he will never forget that glance.

 _I’m the_ villain, he wants to say, _I’m_ supposed _to be the villain. Don’t you understand?_

No, he grasps. She doesn’t. 

  
  
  
  
  


It’s not about what you are, she’d essentially told him. It’s about what you’ve done.

It’s the first time that he’s ever felt shame, and the emotion is unfamiliar, peeling away at the layers of himself, rising like heat to the surface of his skin.

Maybe this is what it’s like to be human.

  
  
  
  
  


Stopping Titan wasn’t the hard part. Facing the world afterwards was.

 _They know what you are,_ he reminds himself patiently, as his skin fades to pale blue and the great eyes emerge. _They know what you’ve done, and they’ve seen what you just did._

For the first time in his life, the two sides of him agree to disagree.

  
  
  


Later, Roxanne cradles him on her sofa, deer-bright eyes soft as rabbit fur. She can feel the tension in him, even now, after everything. She can read him like braille. And so it’s not such a surprise when she tells him, “You don’t have to be a villain forever.”

Megamind has never cried before, and he isn’t going to start now; indeed, he doesn’t know if he even could. He does know, however, that it is only possible to accept the things we believe we deserve, and love is first among them. 

He places a cool hand on top of hers, alien-to-woman, and she does not shift away.

“Why didn’t you give up on me?” he asks finally.

“Because I knew you couldn’t create a hero,” Roxanne murmurs, voice a patient low, “Just like I knew you can’t be born a villain.”

  



End file.
